Apart from being physically dependent on her laptop, Anna is enthusiastic about writing and producing local grassroots theatre (especially at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she can be found every summer), visiting friends who live in other countries, Marvel Comics, learning new things, and Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.
Although her most recent work is in the LGBT Fiction genre, in the past Anna has worked on a variety of different projects including short stories, drabbles, flash fiction, fan fiction, plays for both children and adults, and poetry. She has written novels in the Teen/ Young Adult genre, Romance, and Fantasy novels.
Anna is, by her own admission, almost unhealthily obsessed with books. The library she has amassed is both large and diverse; "My favourite books," she says, "are The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood." She also several well-read copies of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park books and re-reads the Harry Potter novels with almost startling regularity.
Anna claims her entire career is due to the love, support, pre-reading and creative ass-kicking provided by her closest friend Jennifer. Jennifer refuses to accept any responsibility for anything Anna has written.
Anna’s website: www.annamartin-fiction.com
Twitter and Instagram: @missannamartin
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On the last Thursday before Christmas, Edward’s shop was quiet. He hadn’t minded in the morning; Edward liked to take the mornings slowly, waking up with multiple cups of tea while he worked on anything that had been left over from the previous day. Business often picked up around lunchtime.
With the hammering rain outside creating a lovely background tune for his task, Edward finished the repairs on an old smoking jacket and carefully set it on a hanger ready for steam cleaning. The jacket had come from a man who’d found it in his granddad’s attic, and wanted to wear it for his wedding on New Year’s Eve. It was a marvellous thing—black velvet with satin lapels and a beautiful patterned lining. Edward hadn’t recognised the name on the label so he’d turned to the internet to research it. That had taken a few days, but he’d learned that it had likely come from a tailor in London, who had been very fashionable in the nineteen twenties. The jacket was probably a hundred years old.
Edward had opened his tailoring and alterations shop in the village of Little Wetherill, on the northern edge of Dartmoor, almost six years ago. Despite his relative youth in the community, he’d become a solid figure in it. People travelled from all over the south-west to bring him things—either repairs, which he enjoyed, or custom projects, which he’d built his reputation on.
His mother had been overtly derisive of his decision to open a real-life, bricks and mortar shop, convinced that he’d never be able to turn it into a profitable business. But Edward had been running a bespoke tailoring business out of his living room for years, and he had a small but loyal following of people who bought his custom designs online.
Sure, the shop was small, and cold, and in the first year he’d been forced to spend hundreds of pounds replacing the windows at the front so they were double-glazed. In the winter he only got the sun first thing in the morning because of the side of the high street he was located on. So he’d spent even more money installing good lights, so he could see what he was doing at his workstation at the back of the shop. It was worth it. Every penny.
Edward was startled from his cup of tea by the shop door crashing open, then a man rushed into the shop looking particularly red-faced and out of breath. Edward thought that when he calmed down, he might look attractive. Handsome, even. Probably looking for a gift for his wife, knowing Edward’s luck.
“Can I help?”
“I really hope so.” The man heaved his satchel, which was dripping with rainwater, onto Edward’s counter. “I don’t suppose you have a set of nativity costumes that would fit a group of five and six year old children?”
Edward stared at him. “I’m a tailor. A menswear tailor.”
“I know. It’s just that I’ve been everywhere, literally everywhere, and I don’t know who else to ask.”
Curiosity killed the cat.
“How many costumes do you need?”
He started to count them off on his fingers. “Mary and Joseph. Three wise men, three shepherds, three sheep, a cow and a donkey. The inn keeper and his wife, and the Angel Gabriel. And a star.”
Edward blinked. “Seventeen. Seventeen costumes.”
“Yes.” He nodded rapidly. “Ten boys and seven girls. That’s my class.”
“And when do you need these by?”
“Three o’ clock tomorrow afternoon.”
“Can you sew?” Edward asked, feeling like asking had been a monumentally bad idea.
“Honestly? No.”
Edward stared at the handsome intruder. Did he want to make seventeen nativity costumes? Of course he didn’t. That sounded like absolute mayhem. He took a deep breath, then sighed.
“Well, for your sake, I hope you’re a fast learner.”
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